{"id":2655,"date":"2022-09-02T16:42:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T20:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wholetomato.com\/?p=2655"},"modified":"2022-09-02T17:01:27","modified_gmt":"2022-09-02T21:01:27","slug":"how-much-time-and-money-does-visual-assist-save","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stage.wholetomato.com\/blog\/how-much-time-and-money-does-visual-assist-save\/","title":{"rendered":"How much time and money does Visual Assist save?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visual Assist is one of the most powerful and intelligent coding assistance solutions for Visual Studio C\/C++, but how much time (or money) do development teams save with such a lightweight add-on?<\/span><\/p>\n

In this blog post, we try to guesstimate the <\/span>value <\/span><\/i>of Visual Assist as a productivity and time-saving tool.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why do developers need Visual Assist?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Before we dive into the numbers, we first need to understand why having Visual Assist is needed in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Technically speaking, VA is not <\/span>necessary <\/span><\/i>to code in Visual Studio. However, some <\/span>developers can attest<\/span><\/a> that there are projects that are almost infeasible to do without tools like VA.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, those working with large C++ source code may find that the IDE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s built-in features can <\/span>choke on resource-intensive processes<\/span><\/a>. In this case, users will greatly benefit from VA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s highly performant and context-aware features that have been specifically designed to support the areas where Visual Studio needs it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s do some simple calculations with some hypothetical scenarios. You will soon find out that the <\/span>opportunity cost<\/b> in having Visual Assist is so low and the <\/span>return on investment<\/b> so high that there is simply no reason to ever code without it again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visual Assist for Developers<\/b><\/h2>\n

For developers, the benefit of having a performant and light coding assistant is pretty easy to understand. With VA installed, coding is simply faster and easier. With a slew of features designed to support even the highly complex C++ language, developers can focus on more important tasks.
\n<\/span>
\n\"Visual<\/a><\/p>\n

The amount a developer spends wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t define the usefulness of VA. A better metric to look at would be <\/span>how productive it makes you <\/b>or<\/span> how much time it saves.\u00c2\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

In one of <\/span>Visual Assist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reviews<\/span><\/a>, a game developer describes VA as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153absolutely needed for professional programming in Visual Studio.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He explains how the features provided are <\/span>basic\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<\/span><\/i>so much so that he was surprised that Visual Studio shipped without it in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nA VA user testimonial. <\/span>Read more reviews on G2.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: Ryan has since been recognized as a <\/span>Whole Tomato MVP<\/span><\/a>, but this review was submitted prior.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The value of Visual Assist for developers is that it makes development work faster and easier. It’s like investing in a good quality mouse\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe regular one will do the job just too, but the added macros, extra buttons, and smoother experience in a <\/span>premium<\/span><\/i> mouse just feels better and more productive. You get the same results, just faster and with fewer inputs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Visual Assist for Teams and Businesses<\/b><\/h2>\n

Project managers and developer leads are in a perpetual search of ways to make the most out of eight hours. These are the people whose decisions influence others, so they are usually more results-driven.<\/span><\/p>\n

An analysis of our user surveys and focus group responses show that VA can <\/span>increase productivity by around 20%<\/b>. This means that having Visual Assist effectively reduces a 40-hour work effort to about 32 hours.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is an estimated-cost-savings matrix of an average project with and without Visual Assist:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Visual Assist can save teams 48-hours and $1,900 for a project that normally takes 10 work days.<\/p><\/div>\n

VA helps maintain code by analyzing projects for technical errors and code smells. It catches issues as teams are writing code, saving them time during the testing and integration phase. <\/span><\/p>\n

And since VA is regularly updated<\/a>, the automatic prompts and corrections it suggests are always based on the latest coding and linter standards. Overall, it makes maintaining and testing code less tedious and time consuming.<\/span><\/p>\n

These suggestions, no matter how minuscule, add up and save teams and businesses valuable time. They don’t have to spend extended periods of time manually checking code\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmeaning they can skip a considerable chunk of the development process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are a couple of VA’s time saving features:<\/p>\n